The Challenge & Opportunity
The world today is characterized by a growing human population - projected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, increase in living standards, mostly in developing countries, dwindling water and soil resources and global warming related phenomena. In order to ensure adequate supplies of food, feed and fuel, we face the challenging task of producing more output with reduced inputs. Additional challenges include preserving existing resources by reducing air, water and land pollution, as well as coping with climate changes.
Improving plant performance so as to increase crop yield, bolster resistance to climate changes and reduce water requirements is the foremost solution for coping with these daunting challenges. Plant genomics offer a promising opportunity to improve plants.
Key application of plant genomics for improving plant performance are: Biotechnology, Advanced Breeding and Ag-Chemicals.
According to the USDA, more than half of the unprecedented growth in major field crops yield gains in the U.S over the past 70 years owes much to genetic improvement achieved by plant breeding and, more recently, through biotechnology.
The introduction of new traits (via genes) into crops, an industry of $13.2 billion in 2011, with an annual growth rate of 14% in recent years. Plant biotechnology offers a virtually unlimited palette of traits that can be enhanced or introduced into plants to meet farmers' needs worldwide.
With the global seed market today valued at approximately $35 billion, enhancing native traits through genomics-guided, efficient and precise breeding schemes plays a major role in ensuring food, feed and fuel security by developing new plant varieties.
A global market valued at approximately $48 billion, comprised mainly of herbicides, insecticides and pesticides. The growing understanding of plant genomics allows development of novel ag-chemicals with new modes of action. Recently, the introduction of ag-chemicals impacting plant growth and stress tolerance provide a major growth engine.
Using our cutting edge computational genomics technologies, ATHLETE™, Gene2Product™, EvoBreed™ and PoinTar™ we specialize in improving traits through applying biotechnology and advanced breeding for a wide variety of crops. As of today, we have discovered and validated in plants over 4,000 genes, linked to traits, such as improved yield and drought tolerance.
Our partners are world leading seed companies that collaborate with us to introduce our discovered traits into their elite commercial lines and further develop & commercialize them through sales of seeds displaying improved performance. Such collaborations are based on research & licensing agreements that usually include Evogene receiving up front and research payments, milestone payments and royalties from seeds sold. Our partners include leading multinational seed companies, such as Bayer Crop Science, Biogemma of the Limagrain Group, Monsanto Company, DuPont, Syngenta and others.
Our Business Model |